44 A RePOR TeR AT LARGe A FEW weeks ago, with CE.LE.STIAL IS THE. RE.AL THING tall and dark and looked as If the Army's permission, he found it unnatural to stand I was prowling through a North he invited me to sit down. I asked if bolt upright. American B-25, one of the kind that our itinerary had been decided upon. Both of them shook hands with me bombed Tokio, and shaking my head "Yes," he said "We'll fly from here firmly. I asked Mautner where his home over just what a hideously potent weap- to Freeport, then cut south across the was. After a second or two he wrenched on it is. By wriggling forward across the Gulf to Brownsville, where we'll land. out the word "California." I assumed top of the bomb bay, there being not We'll leave Brownsville G:S soon as he had probably lived in a number of enough room to crawl, I came into a it's dark, go to Brady, and then back places and was having some trouble tiny, dark-green cubicle just behind the to San Antonio-about a thousand miles in making a selection. Levin grinned. pilots' compartment. Here there were in all. Would you like to meet the two "He's from Hollywood," he said, "and no guns or bomb sights; only a collap- students who are going to navigate our doesn't want anybody to know it." sible table, a map case, and several thor- plane? " Both boys had been to college. Maut- oughly unwarlike instruments that might I said I would, and a moment later ner had an A.B. from Columbia. be found in any commercial trans- he called in two boyish cadets named Levin, who was from Chicago, had port. I was told that this was the navi- Mautner and Levin. Mautner was been a couple of months short of a de- gator's compartment. In this cramped a solid fellow with a wide, pinkish, gree at the Illinois Institute of Tech- office was housed the executive brain freckled face and red hair. Levin was nology there when he had joined the of the bomber. The rest of Army. He had majored in the crew-pilots, gunners, chemistry and mathematics. engineers, bombardier-have i. When I asked them how manipulative functions. The I J they liked being navigators, navigator deals only with !)J Mautner and Levin both, ideas. T ra veIling backward, for the first time, seemed sitting on a small collapsible eager to talk. "Just plain stool, he is the man who, if old dead reckoning is pret- rattled by anti-aircraft fire or t " ty interesting," Levin said, attacking fighters, can easily, "but celestial is the real by one small miscalculation, , 1 , ' thing. The first time you cause the loss and destruction ,stand up in that turret at " . of this crucial, man-packed J night and shoot the stars weapon. The more I thought \ and then figure your posi- about navigators and their a , tion and course and estim- quiet duties, the more curious ated time of arrival, and all I became about what they these things work out and were like. Several days later - you turn up later hundreds I arranged to go along on .2. of miles away at an exact a navigators' training flight minute-well, golly, you which -was to start from Kelly feel pretty excited." Field in San Antonio, where "There's an awful lot of one of the Army navigation drama in it," Mautner said, schools is temporarily situat- with feeling. "Y ou take ed. This flight was to be in a your fix and do your figur- squadron of thirteen training ing and all the time your planes, AT -7's, both by day t · I watch is ticking off seconds and by night, over land and c ' I -seconds to keep track over water, presenting to the of,. seconds subtracted from student navigators, as far as f I the time you've got to possible, all the problems of , \ do the job in, seconds till weather and terrain they you'll know whether at might later encounter during the right moment you'll d ..'..- combat in B-25's. (J.. be somewhere, or nowhere. On the day of the flight I :'<: It's those seconds that really I wen t to the navigation (( (( get me." instructors' headquarters at Lieutenant Richards Kelly. Lieutenant Richards, stood up and looked at his the instructor in whose plane fJ 8 , watch. "You fellows better I was going to fly, greeted , a get something to eat," he me from his desk. He was said to his students. "See a small, neat man with gold- you at Hangar 17 at one." en-red hair and a quick man- ner. With that pOIntedly military politeness that al- most all new officers have, AFTER lunch, Lieuten- rl. ant Richards and I foun d thirty or forty cadets